The Javari River and its tributaries form a network of watercourses that lead to the indigenous territory of the Javari Valley, which houses the concentration of tribes living in excessive isolation in the western tip of Brazil, the so-called “remote tribes”. The first cases of COVID-19 were reported inside the reserve in spaces close to remote groups.
PUBLISHED August 18, 2020
Amid the growing alarm that the new coronavirus has penetrated deep into the Amazon rainforest, threatening remote tribes, Brazil’s Supreme Court this month unanimously ruled in favor of indigenous peoples’ calls to force them to leave the pandemic.
Even before the August 5 decision, indigenous teams praised the case as an unprecedented triumph. This is the first time that the High Court has agreed to hear a case brought through aboriginal litigants without intermediaries, such as the FUNAI Aboriginal Affairs Agency. The agency, whose project is to protect the rights and lands of the indigenous peoples of Brazil, has been noted in the face of its interests under the command of the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.
“This is a historic and incredible victory for us indigenous peoples,” says Luiz Eloy Terena, lead lawyer for articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), the country’s main indigenous federation, which has joined six opposition political parties to handle the case. . opposed to the government. “It’s a popularity of our own social organization bureaucracy.”
The court ordered the administration to expand and implement a comprehensive plan within 30 days to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in indigenous territories, i.e. those where the teams live in excessive isolation – so-called “remote tribes” – are present. In addition, the government will need to establish an operating organization with indigenous representatives, as well as a “situation room” in Brasilia to continuously monitor efforts to block or involve the pandemic on forest lands inhabited by remote and recently contacted indigenous people. Equipment.
To date, more than 25,000 indigenous peoples from 146 tribal communities have tested positive for COVID-19 across Brazil, according to APIB. Nearly 700 died. It is known whether the pandemic has reached a remote aboriginal group, but there is deep unrest among defenders of perspective.
While the Supreme Court ruled in favor of protections opposed to COVID-19, it did not set a timetable for whistleblowers’ claims: the early expulsion of illegal loggers, miners and speculators from lands from seven indigenous territories scattered across the Amazon. The intrusions of foreigners pose a serious threat to health as the pandemic breaks out and the court’s refusal to impose a concrete plan for their expulsion has dampened the jubilation of Aboriginal leaders.
“It’s an incomplete victory,” says Beto Marubo of the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley, who returned to his workplace in Brasilia last week after a stopover at his home on the border with Peru. “It is very symbolic and positive that the Supreme Court be recognized, but we did not expect there to be a delay in deportation of the intruders.”
Given the ease with which COVID-19 spreads, Marubo fears the worst. “When we say in Javari that there is an option of genocide, we are accused of alarmists,” Marubo says. “But if a user of a remote tribe is infected, it infects their entire group. Anyone who knows the javari knows that this can happen.
The vast indigenous territory of the Javari Valley, in the far west of Brazil, is a cause for particular fear for fitness officials and indigenous leaders. It is home to the concentration of remote indigenous communities around the world, and fitness experts say these tribes have an exceptionally high threat of contagion because they have no immune defenses opposed to pathogens that have evolved in remote population centers.
To increase the sense of urgency in Javari and elsewhere, last week, a group of remote nomads entered the Kulina village of Terra Nova in the springs of the Envira River, about 30 miles southwest of the Javari Reserve in Acre state.
Speaking to the newspaper O Globo from a public telephone in the village, Chief Cazuza Kulina reported that 10 to 20 members of the tribe, adding women and children, had taken food, equipment and clothing before mingling with the forest. The villagers told the newspaper that several citizens had symptoms that may simply involve the presence of coronavirus: headache, cough and lethargy. Cazuza said that neither FUNAI nor the SESAI indigenous fitness service had arrived in the village to establish and establish quarantine sites, known as “fitness barriers”, which may have helped the organization against COVID-19 and a number of infectious diseases.
“Since the beginning of the colonization of Brazil, these peoples have suffered and died from infections transmitted by colonizers, such as measles, smallpox, tuberculosis and influenza strains,” indigenous fitness expert Lucas Infantozzi Albertoni said in an email, referring to indigenous populations that had little or no contact with the outdoor world. He wrote from a hospital sent on the Tapajus River in central Amazonas, where he travels annually to treat patients in remote communities. “These diseases have led to massive mortality rates, which has led to the extinction of entire ethnic equipment and the social disintegration of many others.”
A medical team from the Brazilian armed forces arrives in the indigenous village of Cruzeirinho, on the Javari River, on the border with Peru. With sporadic or government-provided fitness services, some communities have erected barricades to prevent intruders from entering after the pandemic began spreading to the region last March. Other villagers fled into the jungle.
Even though the court ordered the status quo of fitness barriers to prevent the advance of coronavirus, there have also been reports of the first cases of COVID-19 in villages dangerously close to a remote organization in the indigenous territory of the Javari Valley.
On 6 August, an elderly woman from the Kanamari tribe succumbed to illness after being evacuated from the Hobana agreement on the upper Itaqua River, less than 16 kilometres from the gardens planted by a remote tribe known as Flecheiros: the Flecheiros. (This indigenous rights activist almost came face-to-face here with the other Arrows 16 years ago.)
The first cases of COVID-19 in the Javari reserve were reported in a village downstream, the maximum likely brought through government physical care teams. But the sudden emergence of COVID-19 at the back of the reserve worries Aboriginal leaders and fitness experts. With all its rivers flowing from a rugged spring domain in the center, the reserve is seamlessly found by large-scale incursions through riverbank checkpoints. But despite how complicated it is to succeed in villages like Hobana via a boat, experts say the virus has entered Javari through a kind of backdoor: walking trails open through the forest through entrepreneurial Kanamari to buy goods in cities such as Ipixuna and Eirunepé in the Juru River.
“Our wonderful concern now, which has manifested itself, is that the disease enters along the trails leading to the river that have FUNAI checkpoints downstream,” says Aboriginal lawyer Terena. In addition to the Kanamari, several other contacted indigenous teams (Matis, Marubo, Matsés) occupy lands dangerously close to remote equipment in remote resources of the Javari reserve, explains Terena, which expands the chances of the virus spreading to unrescated immune nomads who oppose the disease. and no ability to treat it.
To date, 441 cases of COVID-19 infection and two deaths in the Javari Valley have been reported to SESAI.
“An infection in one of the contacted villages can temporarily spread to these remote groups,” says Terena. This is especially true now with the beginning of the dry season in the western Amazon region. This is the time of year when floodwaters receding from the forest floor, and entire communities, in particular remote nomads, move in search of sustenment.
It’s also the time of year, says Beto Marubo, when remote teams sneak into the colonies to use food and equipment. The same remote nomads have visited the village of Marubo de Sao Joaquim, on the Itu River, year after year. “They come in the afternoon and bring food (bananas, sugar cane, potatoes) and equipment like machetes and axes,” he says. “And there was a case of coronavirus.”
Although heavily criticized for its reaction to the COVID-19 crisis, FUNAI says the court’s resolution will not make much difference in its plans. “The Supreme Court ruling allows us to know the steps that have been taken through the Do Nion National Foundation [FUNAI] to protect indigenous peoples from the beginning of the pandemic,” the firm told National Geographic in an email. The firm cited the delivery of 500,000 food baskets to families in “social vulnerability” and what it called help for more than three hundred fitness barriers.
But Aboriginal leaders say FUNAI’s reaction has been very poor, so they took their case to court to begin with. They also argue that the Court’s refusal to set a timetable for the deportation of intruders will foster a growing sense of impunity.
Marubo says poachers are appearing in Javari communities for the first time in decades, threatening VILLAGErs and FUNAI staff with violence. On the sidewalk of Solus, they invoked the call of FUNAI employee Maxciel Pereira dos Santos, killed last September in the vicinity of the city of Tabatinga. “Have you noticed how Maxciel killed last year? Marubo said, repeating the taunts of the criminals.” The same thing may happen to you.”
Dos Santos had worked for FUNAI for the remote tribes of the Javari reserve for 12 years before being shot dead by a hitman on a motorcycle in broad daylight. No one’s been held accountable. (Violence is increasing for indigenous communities as Brazil tries to weaken FUNAI.)
“There was no action from the authorities, nothing that would have shown a strong reaction from the Brazilian government,” Marubo said. As a result, other FUNAI staff members have been reluctant to take their paintings seriously. “They say to themselves, “If this happens to Maxciel, it may happen to me too.”
Ms. Terena hopes that the Court’s ruling will bring to life the hesitant efforts to involve the spread of the pandemic. If decisive action is not taken in the coming weeks, he said, he could disclose to the government the accusations of violating foreign laws.
“I would like to emphasize that, as far as remote peoples are concerned, non-compliance with court-ordered measures can lead to the genocide of these populations.”
The graves of the coVID-19 sufferers fill a new segment of the cemetery of Nossa Senhora Aparecida in Manaus. More than 100,000 cases of COVID-19 and 3,500 deaths have been reported in the state, where infection rates are beginning to stabilize.